ITEC NEWSLETTERVol. 5, No. 10November 14, 1997

The Wizard Seminar will be held December 3 and 4, 1997 at the Four Points HotelinSyracuse. There will be a Track A: System and Technical; and Track B:Oracle/Banner. OnDecember 3 at 7 p.m. there will be "Birds of a Feather" discussiongroups. Todate the topics are "Banner Technical FAUG" and "WindowsNT/BackOffice."

Please contact me if you would like to register for Wizard and if you have anyadditional"Birds of a Feather" discussion topics. I can be reached at716-878-4832 orboquarba@itec.suny.edu. Hotel arrangements can be made by contacting the FourPointsdirectly at 314-457-1122.

In June 1996, Oracle announced the end of Oraclemetals Support for Oracle7,Releases7.1.x, effective October 31, 1997 for all platforms. Due to the architecture ofDIGITAL'sAlpha and VAX OpenVMS operating systems and changes in OpenVMS Version 7,Oracle7 Release7.3 for OpenVMS required a longer porting period. Oracle recognizes thatcustomers onthese platforms were not able to start their upgrades due to the delayedavailability ofOracle 7.3 on these platforms. As a result, Oracle has extended theOraclemetals supportperiod for Oracle 7.1.5 for Alpha and VAX OpenVMS to June 30, 1998. Thisextension isbeing provided at no additional cost to Oracle supported Alpha and VAX OpenVMScustomers.

The terminal release of Oracle 7.1 for Alpha and VAX OpenVMS is 7.1.5. All OpenVMScustomers must be on this release of 7.1 for continued Oraclemetals supportthrough June30, 1998. Extended Assistance Support will be provided for 3 years afterOraclemetalsSupport ends to those customers who are unable to migrate before June 30, 1998.ExtendedAssistance Support provides for telephone and electronic support only,consisting of thefollowing:

* Answering customer questions* Providing workarounds and fixes that may be available for known problems, ifpossible* Providing customers with migration path information

Extended Assistance Support does not provide for the following:

* Software error correction support* Backporting of fixes* Certification with supported products or newer operating system releases* Escalation Support or guaranteed response times or skill availability

Due to these limitations, Oracle strongly recommends that customers upgrade toOracle 7.3as soon as possible to maintain the highest level of support for their productsandsystems.

The following table illustrates the product lifecycle for Oracle7 for Alpha andVAXOpenVMS platforms:

3) Oracle supports running Developer/2000 Release 1.0 against Oracle 7.3 in aclient/server configuration only. On OpenVMS, the only supported configurationofDeveloper/2000 Release 1.0 with Oracle 7.3 is to run the tools on a separatehardwareclient connecting to Oracle 7.3 on an OpenVMS 7.x system via SQL*Net V2.

4) These products are only available in Oracle 7.1.x bundles on OpenVMS. Theseproductsare not included in the Oracle 7.3.x bundles, but are certified and supportedin aclient/server installation for Oracle 7.3, using SQL*Net V2, through release7.3.4. OnOpenVMS, the only supported configuration of these products with Oracle 7.3 is to run the tools on a separate hardware clientconnecting toOracle 7.3 on an OpenVMS 7.x system via SQL*Net V2. SQL*Net V1 is not supportedagainstOracle 7.3.

5) The end of Oraclemetals support for Oracle 7.3 on all Oracle platforms willbedetermined after the release of Oracle8. The end of Oraclemetals support forOracle 7.3will occur no earlier than December 31,1999, and Oracle will provide 24 monthsadvancednotification prior to the end of Oraclemetals support.

7) Oracle 7.1.5 is the terminal release of Oracle 7.1 for OpenVMS customers. OnVAX,Oracle 7.1.5 supports OpenVMS 5.5-2 through 6.2. On Alpha, Oracle 7.1.5supports OpenVMS6.1 through 6.2. OpenVMS customers must be on Oracle 7.1.5 for continuedOraclemetalssupport through June 30, 1998. Error correction support for any other Oracle7.1.x releasewill be limited and is subject to priority 1 severity problems and technicalfeasibility.

Submitted by Mike Notarius

3.Oracle patch forDBMS_PIPES onAlpha under 7.1.5

Hello Everyone!

I would like to Thank Kathy Paranya for pointing this required patch on AlphaOpenVMSOracle 7.1.5.2.3. I will include the e-mail from the Banner Oracle listservethat Kathyforwarded to me. Please note as the "itec_readme.txt" file in theGETSOFTWAREsaveset explains, you only need the patch for Bug #381331.

I just got this e-mail message and don't know if you are aware of the problemsthat Bannercampuses have been having with Oracle pipes. There will be more and more Bannercampusesusing this piping system as they move to Banner 2.1.x, so if you caninvestigate thesepatches it would be great.

This is to let everyone know that we think we have a solution to the G Gurjobsproblemthat people have experienced with Oracle 7.1.5 (mostly VMS Shops). The problembeing theGURJOBS pipe & all of Job submission freezes and you need to bring down thedatabaseto clear the problem -- thanks to all the hard work of Don Gaarder at theAction Line forfinding this patch. According to the BUG Reports, this is a pipe & timingproblem andrequired a backport. We've been since last Friday now without GURJOBS stopping(knock onfake wood product.) I think this is the solution we've been looking for!

For those who get their support from Oracle, the related bug numbers that youshould lookfor are:Bug #287705, Bug #334693, Bug #381331. (Our TAR# was 10385917.5)

Once you install the patched files, you need to relink oracle and all theapplications ...Not too bad of a job.

After we implemented the solution, we shipped the tape to SCT to help in itsdistribution.They should have the tape by now.

Also, I notice that from a client perspective, GURJOBS seems to process a bitfaster (nolong wait aor gray screen waiting for the message to be processed).

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I hope this info is helpful to you aswell.

If you have more than one concurrent Oracle product user, installing theproduct in sharedmemory can potentially save physical memory and increase performance.

You can also install some or all of the Oracle products in shared memory byrunning theORA_INSUTL.COM file. If a product is installed into shared memory, each productneedsadditional global pages (these numbers are approximate) as indicated by thefollowingtable:

2. Enter the number of the product you want to install and press[RETURN]. Enter ALLto install all products. Enter E or EXIT to leave this menu with the productsyouselected. Enter Q for Quit to leave this menu without installing any product.

It then runs INSUTILITY to install the selected products in shared memory andexits.ORA_UTIL:INSUTILITY.COM and ORA_UTIL:REMUTILITY.COM are defined as follows:

INSUTILITY.COM:

Installs Oracle products other than the Server (RDBMS), such as Oracle Formsand SQL*Plus,in shared memory.

REMUTILITY.COM:

Removes the products from shared memory, such as Oracle Forms and SQL*Plus,installed byINSUTILITY.COM. It does not affect the shared global sections of the Oracle7images.

PLEASE NOTE: if you see Oracle programs taking up memory for each user, andthese productsdon't appear in the list mentioned above, then you can add them to the twofiles(ORA_UTIL:INSUTILITY.COM and ORA_UTIL:REMUTILITY.COM) yourself (by using thelines in thefile already as a guide) so the program will run in shared memory.